The House

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Where have you been all my life John Galsworthy?

Where has John Galsworthy been
all my life? I have read thousands of books and never read The Forstye Sage.
What a revelation! Charles Dickens go bark at the moon! Galsworthy lived from
1867 to 1932 and his work reveals an attitude of “a man of property”; Soames Forstye; timeless and timely. Galsworthy has an insight
into British exceptionalism that is familiar and sad in its intransigeant. Soames is a solidly wealthy man. Not only did
he inherit great wealth he was raised to believe in his superiority in that
fact. Having grown his wealth with practical English logic almost Vulcan in its
detachment, he finds himself in his later years defending his universe to
himself thus;

Take his own case for example! He was well off. Did that do anybody
harm? He did not eat ten meals a day; he did no more than, perhaps not so much
as, a poor man. He spent no money on vice; breathed no more air, used no more water
to speak of than the mechanic or the porter. He certainly had pretty things
about him, but they had given employment in the making, and somebody must use
them. He bought pictures, but Art must be encouraged. He was, in fact, an
accidental channel through which money flowed, employing labour. (sic) What was there objectionable in that? In his
charge money was in quicker and more useful flux that it would be in the charge
of the State and a lot of slow-flying money sucking officials. And as to what
he saved each year-it was just as much flux as what he didn’t save, going into
Water Board or Council Stocks, or something sound and useful. The State paid
him no salary for being trustee of his own or other people’s money – he did
that all for nothing! Therein lay the whole case against nationalisation –
owners of private property were unpaid, and yet had every incentive to quicken
up the flux. Under nationalization (sic) – just the opposite!

Soames’ cogitations come in the
roaring twenties and with a jaundice eye toward human beings he has been able
to ride the profits of chaos with the expertise of the great British Empire
builders and explorers. He is not oblivious to the “ruffians” in the market
running up commodities, selling shoddy goods and undermining the practical
English character. His only concern is to dodge these gamblers and come out
ahead. He is totally unaware of the benefits bequeathed to him on the backs of
slaves and oppression. After this brief attempt at bolstering his own world
view he proceeds to one of his many law offices and orders sale of stocks and
the eviction of an old woman of eighty three. There! English practicality
prevails and all is right with the world!

The attitude of the elite, the 1%
is a grand and gross rationalization. What harm does it do indeed!? Soames is a
cold man of property, his love of his first wife was that of a buyer of beauty.
When he realizes he may lose this perfectly beautiful woman his response is to
show her how much she “belongs” to him by “ enforcing his rights as a husband”
; spousal rape. Confident in his re-possession, believing she was finally
convinced of his loyalty to her by his showing of intense emotion he is
devastated by her finding a lover. Devastated to learn of her careful avoidance
of pregnancy, and suffers the role of the victim, why doesn’t she adore me?

I can’t help feeling sorry for
him as does his cousin Jolyon Forstye who marries Irene, the woman who from
some “perversion” is unable to submit to Soames. Unsentimental, practical, controlled
and controlling English man of art bought and paid for, but artless to his
core. In his way he feels deeply his position in the Empire and his family, but
never expresses it, each rare tender moment with a dying father, the birth of a
daughter, the grief of losing his perfect wife, is concentrated, condensed to
the point of pain almost unbearable; to be carefully hidden and covered over
with business, logic, plans. Force and strength are all he knows. He does not
know he is lost, caged and cut off, like Midas.

The crash is coming, war yet
again. His type will be undone, the gilded cage will break and like
domesticated birds he will not be able to fly for he never learned. A world
will crash about him. As a reader almost one hundred years later, to see this
hubris repeated yet again makes me feel like an alien in a weird way. The elite
of today, those empire builders that had it handed to them after World War II
are coming to the downhill side; Tied in knots by their own exceptionalism,
their own practical rationalizations’. The “job makers”, the Kings of the
Universe, the smartest men in the room, the men of free markets, of world
order.

I am reminded of the poem by
Kipling;

The
White Mans Burden;

Take
up the White Man’s burden

Send
forth the best ye breed

Go
bind your sons to exile

To
serve the captive’s need

…

In
patience to abide,

To
veil the threat of terror

And
check the show of pride;

…

The
savage wars of peace

Fill
full the mouth of Famine

And
bid the sickness cease;

…

And
reap his old reward:

The
blame of those ye better,

The
hate of those ye guard

We should trade white for rich as in the new world economy the “burden”
is shared and carefully nurtured by the elite of all races, colors and creeds.
America may have been handed the spoils of empire after World War II, but the
views of the fictional Soames Forsyte have been sold to the entire
world. We fought the fascism of old only to pass down and expand that fascism in
a “burden” of democratic fascism to all men around the world. The rich are
democratic among themselves, a country apart. They see themselves as the
conduit of civilization, nothing would happen without them;not greatness, no jobs, no art or beauty. They
will tell you it isn’t about the money and it would be the God’s honest truth. What
is this human capacity for wearing psychic blinders? Are they put on while one
is very young? Are we born with them, the psyche’s way of protecting the young
ego, and then that same ego is never allowed to take them off? Why is it that
the elite rich keep the blinders in place? It seems to me that the culture of
wealth must maintain a separation in their minds between their actions and the
fragile ego’s knowledge of the harm they do? This wall is kept carefully
between themselves and the “lower” classes. (Euphemistically called “working”
class)They must know. They can’t possibly
live in such fish bowls where everyone can see all they do as they parade
around and deny what we all see and experience. It is a grand culture of
narcissism.

Galsworthy’s ability to observe a class, his keen subjectivity as a
Brit, his poetic prose, the beauty is astonishing almost breath taking like
fine portraiture. One chapter covering the death of old Jolyn Forsyte leaves
one in a state of longing for all death to be as beautiful. All writing should
aspire to this.